Underwater environments can be used to explore new resources that can be employed in the fields of medical science and energy resources. Humans are dependent on the valuable resources that exist beneath Earth’s surface. Underwater exploration requires enhanced images that are obtained using enhancement methods. So, it is important that underwater image enhancement (UIE) methods work well in terms of performance and accuracy. As a result, research in UIE has increased in the past few years. An extensive survey is conducted on existing UIE methods along with their broad classification, underwater datasets, and evaluation metrics, respectively. The experimental analysis is conducted to compare the existing UIE methods in terms of qualitative and quantitative evaluation metrics. The real-world applications and future scope of existing enhancement methods are highlighted and discussed.